(This is the pause while all you language students try to make sense of what I just wrote…pause…pause)

Today is the first day of Hawaiian language month, that is, February!

And in my effort to be WAY better at sharing my aloha for my ʻōlelo makuahine (mother tongue, which for me is really my father tongue, so to speak), I am just going to share short and sweet daily words and hope that I can keep up during the weekdays at least. Stop here. Say a little prayer for me in hopes that I can do it. Okay, proceeding.

So today we actually have three words:

Mahina – month or moon

ʻŌlelo – to say, speak, language

Hawaiʻi – the place, Hawaiʻi, or Hawaiian

ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi – Hawaiian language

Wahine Hawaiʻi – Hawaiian woman

Hana noʻeau Hawaiʻi – Hawaiian art

I am going to let go of all of my hangups with trying to be PERFECT in every aspect (except spelling and translation, that has to be as perfect as I can possibly be which means that you may find a needle in a haystack and may disagree with my spelling or my translation but then you’d be wrestling with me, Mary Kalena Pukui, and many others). If you don’t like my grammar (especially my run on sentences or incomplete sentences, punctuation where it does or doesn’t belong), my inconsistency with bolding or italicizing, well, love me anyway. I mean well.